The Spiritual Journey

We are all on a journey to Mt. Sinai at the center of our souls.  We are all in the desert, trying to make our way to the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey.  We are all wandering around, trying to make sense of the road signs along the way.  And we are all just walking one another home.

We are all hoping to hear the Voice that speaks to our inner man, and we are all feeding hungrily on whatever manna we can find on the way.  We are all thirsting for the water that satisfies our souls and that gives us comfort and refreshment in a dry land.

From the time I was a child, I collected bits and pieces of inspiration that gave me hope, that gave me joy, that opened a door to the truth I sought.  In high school, I made my own 'anthology of wisdom,' of writings, sayings, and quotations that inspired me, that pointed me along the path, and that gave me joy.  My soul resonated with the truth as it was expressed by those who had gone before me, so when I taught Sophomore and Junior religion later in life, I had the girls make their own spiritual anthologies, or collections of the wisdom that inspired their souls.  We decoupaged the covers of their anthologies, to make them more inspiring and permanent and beautiful -- and I let them find the truths that satisfied them on their own journeys.

This is why I blog today.  At some point in my life, I saw myself holding up a chalice to receive wisdom and truth from The Only Source, truth that would spill over to anyone standing near.  I have been extraordinarly privileged to have access to -- and to love finding -- great teachers of wisdom, and I have collected morsels from their teaching that have fed me on my own journey.  And my greatest desire is to share those morsels with others who are also hungry for truth and wisdom.  I feel that I am carrying small wafers of bread in my apron to feed the hungry, and I so want to share my little bites with the world around me.

And yesterday, while cleaning the guest room for my brother, I discovered on my shelf a book by Benedict Groeschel, a great Franciscan monk whose writings have resonated in my soul for many years.  Because of the markings in the book, I know that I must have read it before, but today it seems new to me all over again ---that is the way of the Spirit of God, making all things new again!  Once again, I am thrilled to the core at discovering this book, called The Journey Toward God.  I had forgotten this book, which is a collection of writings about the spiritual journey, or the spiritual development of each individual.  His collection includes writings from Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians, and Benedict Groeschel arranges these writings to correlate with contemporary developmental psychology, as he did some years ago (1982) in his book called Spiritual Passages, the book that first awakened me to Groeschel. 

In this latest book, Groeschel uses three works as his organizational framework: Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism, Garrogou-Lagrange's The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life, and M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled.  It is so good to know that others have traveled the road ahead of us and have left behind them signs and guides to our own journey.  As Groeschel says in his introduction, for the person who attempts an anthology of such writings, "frustration is an unavoidable experience."  We are always leaving out important works and including those that informed readers will question.  But Groescel's response is this: Don't complain to me.  Make your own anthology, and send me a copy.  Better yet, publish it yourself.

That's a great answer, to my way of thought.  Each one of us will resonate to different traditions, to different insights, to different points of view.  And each anthology or collection will reflect the experience, trials, and triumphs of those seriously attempting to respond to the call of God, "Come to a land I will show you."  The desert experience will be different for each one of us, but there is much in common that we can share with one another on the way.  Let us begin!